Roadside warning lamps employing flashing lamps powered by a standard rechargeable car battery are known and are commonly used by road construction workers to alert drivers to the onset of hazardous conditions resulting from road works.
Such warning lamps usually conform to a standard physical dimension and light output which, in combination, has so far militated against the battery being incorporated within the lamp housing itself and has required, instead, that the battery be provided as a completely separate unit.
This limitation results from the fact that in order to provide the required light output, a sufficiently powerful battery is a prerequisite and, so far, this has demanded a relatively large 12 V rechargeable battery having a large ampere-hour rating. Typical roadside warning lamps of the type described are manufactured under the trade name "horizontal SIGNAL" and have standard dimensions of 21 cm in diameter and 21 cm in depth and this, obviously, is too small to accommodate therein such batteries.
A miniature flashing light for mounting on a curb is known such as is manufactured under the trade mark SWAREFLEX which includes therein an LED solar-powered flasher and a storage battery for storing electrical energy transformed by a solar cell. The storage battery has a capacity of 14 days power consumption when fully charged. In order to become fully charged, fine weather (corresponding to intense ambient illumination) is required for a minimum of four days. Likewise, there exist many similar solar-powered lamps employing rechargeable batteries but none has been found suitable for replacing roadside warning lamps of the type described owing to the stringent size and light output specifications associated therewith.